I'm currently experimenting with PHP (as some of you may already noticed) by creating a test site.
In that site, I allow users to save their POP3 server settings, so a "sidebar" on every page tells when they have new messages. For this, I'm using UebiMiau's POP3 module.
Now, the question is, How can I count the messages in a POP3 account without stopping the page from rendering? I mean, I have a function to count messages in any account, but while the server is connecting and retrieving the message list, the page stops loading for a while, until the operation is complete.
The question could be rephrased to: How can I take that action asynchronously? Or, how can I take that action AFTER the whole page is loaded, and then put the result somewhere in the middle of the already loaded content.
That sounds rather difficult, but I hope it's not
Thanks in advance.